Contemporary tapestry artist, Rebecca Mezoff, waxes on about weaving, yarn, and life in the Southwestern United States...

Monday, October 5, 2015

Color Gradation Techniques for Tapestry is ready!

My newest adventure in online teaching is ready. I tell you that with a great sense of relief and just a little bit of angst. You see, I love making courses and I had about four million more ideas for this one. But at some point, it is enough.

Here is the brief outline of what the course contains. You can find out more on THIS page of my website. I will be shooting trailer videos in the next few weeks as well as making my website easier to navigate. In the meantime, if you have questions, please contact me! I recommend taking the entire course either in the version that I teach or the self-directed one. But if you are only interested in one or two of the sections, you can take them separately.

Color Theory Basics and Weft Yarn Choices: A basic introduction to color theory and a discussion of weft yarns available for tapestry.

Irregular Hatching: I covered this in my Warp and Weft: Learning the Structure of Tapestry course. I go into more depth in this course including using hatching for shading and form creation.

Hachure: This traditional tapestry technique was used a great deal in historic European tapestries and is still used by many people today. This class also offers tips on how to make straight lines and shallow curves smoother and how to start to minimize steps in your work.

Transparency Effects: This class talks about using regular hatching and weft bundling to create the illusion of transparency. Weft bundling is also an important concept for all color use in tapestry.

Pick and Pick: This fun technique was taught in Warp and Weft: Learning the Structure of Tapestry. In this class we take it farther and look at using pick and pick in shapes and for blending colors vertically.

Vertical Gradation: This class will show you how to make smooth color shifts up your warp. We will also talk more about using value and hue in color grading and grading with stripes and demi-duite. This is a great companion class to Transparency Effects as we continue the conversation about value and weft bundling.

You can take the course in three different ways.

(1) The complete course. This includes all six parts as well as extra bonuses and a section at the end for feedback on design and practice projects. You can ask as many questions about the course material as you'd like and I'll just keep answering! This way of taking the course is also the least expensive for the most learning. The button on the Pathwright site looks like this:

(2) Self-directed. If you are the kind of person who knows they won't need to ask me questions about the material or get feedback on your progress, this is probably the course for you. It contains all the material of the complete course without teaching from me. The button on the Pathwright site looks like this:

(3) Each of the six parts separately. If you aren't interested in certain topics, you can take any of the six parts alone. They are numbered 1-6 in the Pathwright program and the first module's button looks like this:

If you click the registration link below, it will take you to the Pathwright course site. From the catalog you can browse each of the classes and see a complete list of the videos and materials included in each module.

There are FAQs about my courses on my website HERE.
There are reviews from past and present students HERE.
And the comprehensive information sheet about this course, Color Gradation Techniques for Tapestry, is HERE.

I enjoyed making this course a great deal. I am glad it is completed so I can get back to the studio. However I am sure I will soon be watching for the wonderful things those of you who join me on this tapestry exploration will create. You haven't let me down yet! (see some past student's work HERE)

The course is open for registration. It doesn't have start dates and you can take as long as you want to finish it and ask questions. What could be better? Maybe the fact that you can weave in your pajamas and none of us will even know.

Have at it!
(I'm off for a bit of spinning if you don't mind... Spinzilla started at midnight!)

One tip to help navigate the registration site. Look to the left and there is a menu. If you're looking for the Color Gradation Techniques class options, click that text and it will filter out all my other courses.

6 comments:

Exciting, Rebecca! I am dipping back into tapestry after a 15 year break (don't ask.) But I have been following your posts and links and am psyched to be in touch with so many brilliant weavers! I spend the summer in Edinburgh and it goes without saying that the inspiration there was off the charts. And today I read in the NYT that weaving is making a comeback! Gotta catch that wave! I will look into your color course next. Cheers, Jennifer

Rebecca, I have to say, you have out done yourself with this on line course. I absolutely love being able to put notes up on the videos, etc. It will help me when I want to go back to a certain video to watch something that was special to me. However, I think the most incredibly awesome thing is the video index of the complete course in pdf form. I have printed it out and I'm using it to go watch certain aspects of this course that are important to me before I start actually weaving. This course is going to change my way of weaving tapestry and hopefully I'll become a better tapestry weaver for it. Thank you again for all the hard work you have put into this.